Don't Ride With Strangers
by NervousWreck96
Summary: They told him that he would be helping humanity with his gift of intelligence. However, Tails learns too late that he is merely an unwitting pawn in a devious scheme by G.U.N. and its newest leader, with Tails' own robots as the centerpiece of it all. They may say they're restoring order to the world, but to him and Sonic, it's just another evil plot.
1. Just Another Chaotic Morning

**Hello. What you're looking at right now is the tentative first step to a 12-20 chapter fanfic about everyone's favorite fox, Tails! **_**Don't Ride With Strangers**_** draws inspiration from a Sonic X comic where Tails is brought in by G.U.N. to investigate a mysterious alien sentry bot that Sonic dug up in the desert, as well as an episode of the '90s FOX Kids Spider-Man cartoon where Peter Parker gets a job working for the Kingpin (though he doesn't know it's the Kingpin). **

**If you like what you see so far, or if you have any ideas on how I can improve, then PLEASE drop me a review. Okay, here we go.**

* * *

><p>8:30 AM. Station Square. The city that allegedly doesn't sleep has now fully awoken in all of its cramped, brightly-lit, stainless-steel glory. The familiar big city music of car horns was playing out as traffic was starting to approach its usual levels of gridlock, businesses across the city lifted open their doors, and construction workers fired up their jackhammers.<p>

Adding on to the everyday sounds of city life was a sonic boom, a sound as familiar to Station Square residents as the skyscrapers that looked down upon them every day. It came out of the south in a blue blur, traveling the width of the Great Bay - though it preferred to take the more direct route straight _over_ the water, as opposed to using the more traditional method of the bridge. When you're as fast as Sonic the Hedgehog, the surface tension of water is just another means of finding a shortcut.

The moment he crossed over onto land, he had just enough footing to make a daring leap thirty or so feet into the air. The fortunate few drivers who were able to see this display were almost led to believe that the blue cannonball would either miss its target or end up as a blue pancake on the outside of the barrier. Of course, almost as if he'd calculated the jump precisely in his head, he managed to land exactly where he wanted, right on the barrier, riding the momentum and grinding along, barely losing any speed whatsoever.

It was just another edition of Sonic's morning routine; though he never took the exact same route through the city, Station Square was usually where he passed through, as he returned from whichever completely unplanned sojourn he had taken. This segued into _another_ completely unplanned, unmapped journey, in search of the next adventure, the next big event, wherever it lay.

As he tried to keep his balance while grinding along a sharp turn on the freeway, his left hand clung tightly to a lovely pinkish-red rose, trying to make sure it didn't break apart in his hand from the wind. It wasn't for anyone in particular; it was just a little souvenir he collected from his most recent expedition. Finally, the freeway merged onto the next surface street, and Sonic leapt off the concrete barrier and into the unoccupied bicycle lane, taking off running at a significantly reduced speed of about 350 miles per hour – a speed some scientists would call close to "sub-sonic", but Sonic himself would merely consider "jogging".

All of a sudden, he saw an open space on the road to his left. Immediately, he Quick-Stepped into that space and instantly slid under one of the cars on the street, his nose barely even touching the car's undercarriage. From there, he leapt upward, curling into his spinball form as he did so, and landed right on the roof of the next car in front, which was traveling at about 35 miles an hour.

The hedgehog then sat down and leaned back on the roof of the car, somehow managing to not be blown right off, and held his flower up to his face just to confirm that it was still intact. It was the first time Sonic came to a stop since he set off that morning, and even _then, _the car was still moving while he was laying on it. As the teenage girl who was driving the car looked up to see that familiar pair of blue legs and red sneakers through the windshield, her face practically went white. When she finally regained her composure as well as she could, she squealed with total delight at the prospect of getting to see the famous hero up close and personal. Upon hearing the squeal, Sonic did a spinball jump forward, landing on the hood of the car in a one-handed handstand. In that upside-down position, Sonic looked at the driver, smiled, and winked at her.

With that, the hedgehog leapt forward off the car solely with his arm, curled into a front flip, and landed on the street in front of the car running off at 375 miles per hour, leaving the driver of that car with a slack-jawed expression, eyes wide open as she drove onward.

Sonic briefly looked back and snickered. There was nothing like the adulation of the public to give an ego a boost.

Other than the journey itself, this was definitely among his favorite parts of the journey. Once he got to the city, he was pretty much showing off his spectacular acrobatic prowess to the fair folk of Station Square. Not that Sonic had a problem with showing off, of course. Nor did the citizens mind either. They didn't see anything wrong with getting a bit of spontaneous entertainment before they punched in for work. It helped that Sonic could perfectly control his aerial antics without damaging other people or property.

By now, his mind had floated off somewhere else. He was in a zone, becoming one with the wind that he was creating around him. Every step and every jump now seemed subconsciously performed, almost as if Sonic was now running on some sort of autopilot mode. His vision was now reduced to a series of ever-changing, blurred lines emerging from the center. It was the feeling that Sonic lived for, as the habitual goofy smirk on his face showed. The only thing that could stop the hedgehog now, it seemed, was if he was to suddenly and inexplicably stop breathing.

And it was to become just _that_ kind of week for Sonic the Hedgehog.

Passing into his distorted field of vision for just a split-second was a dark-gray blob. Another split-second later, Sonic's throat instantly grew scratchy, forcing him to cough wildly, while his eyes began to sting and become bloodshot. It didn't take long for him to put two and two together and realize that he had just passed by a cloud of smoke.

As soon as Sonic regained his senses, he took the effort to take his legs out of their perpetual running motion by making a ninety-degree turn in mid-air and landing sideways. The super-durable material on the soles of his shoes did all the work, as they slowed Sonic down from about five hundred miles per hour to zero in just three seconds – albeit not without leaving a long series of gray skid marks on the side of the road.

The first thing that Sonic saw, after his rubbed his irritated eyes, confirmed his suspicions, as a thick, gray cloud of smoke from a couple of miles away could be seen rising over a nearby ten-story office building. Upon witnessing this, the hedgehog (although it's doubtful that he'd admit this to someone else) felt his stomach turn over. The potential disaster he was looking at off in the distance – which, from his point of view, seemed like a fire - _was_ his next adventure, and it made him sick to look at.

As the onlookers on the adjacent sidewalks stood and gawked at the disturbing sight, Sonic, without so much as wasting a breath, took off with an instant sonic boom, in the direction opposite to which he came. It was only about a couple of miles away, but to Sonic, it might as well have been 200. When his running had a purpose, and wasn't just for pleasure, the difference was almost night and day. With his mind working about as fast as his feet, the destination so sharply focused in Sonic's eyes just seemed fixed in place, as if he wasn't moving at all. Suddenly the speed of sound didn't seem to be fast enough. Still, in human time, it took Sonic about ten seconds to reach the source of the smoke. It would've been shorter if Sonic didn't have to account for the growing, densely-packed crowd that had gathered amidst the destruction, as well as sharp 90-degree turns.

Finally, Sonic came to a screeching halt, stopping right at the scene of the chaos, a generic office building on the corner of Castor Street and Pollux Avenue which had been given an "unscheduled demolition" of sorts by Dr. Eggman's newest mega-robot. To Sonic's (somewhat) relief, the actual fire he was expecting to see was just a small, harmless patch that wasn't spreading, and most of the "smoke" he thought he was seeing was actually dust from the impact that leveled the building. The robot itself was something that Sonic himself could barely describe if you asked him, since it was basically the same giant, round, walking design that Eggman had used countless times before, with only one significant design modification: two extendable robotic arms with sharp, serrated cones for hands, which were being used to drill into the ground where the building used to stand.

Sonic threw his arms back, preparing to make a high-speed sneak attack on Eggman's new toy, until he noticed that the robot was already unleashing its barrage of ordinance weapons on another moving target who was just barely avoiding getting hit. At the front of the crowd, Sonic leaned in to get a closer look.

_Wait a minute…..no way…..is that…__**Tails?! **_

Sure enough, to his horror, the dusty, darkened-orange form hurtling through the air, trying to get close enough to Eggman's mech, was that of his two-tailed buddy. He was desperately jumping, flipping, and bouncing off walls, occasionally using his two tails to give him a boost skyward, just trying to avoid getting hit. However, from the battered and darkened condition of his typically bright orange fur, it didn't look like he was anywhere close to winning this fight. He was getting one-half of his objective done, directing the attacks toward himself, and thus, away from the densely-packed crowd, but he wasn't finding it so easy landing any hits of his own. There was slight damage to Eggman's mech, but it was merely cosmetic.

But just when it seemed that he was finally starting to make an advance on the deadly machine, Eggman put his 300 IQ to work. Tracing Tails' trajectory, the onboard computer predicted where the fox would land, with only a millimeter's margin of error. Using that data, Eggman slammed the obligatory big red button on his control panel. On cue, the robot's right arm was retracted from its drilling operation, instead firing a red, fist-sized ball of light right toward where Tails was about to land.

At that moment, an impact seemed imminent, and for a split-second, Tails mentally braced for impact. Even accounting for the fact that Tails could fly, there was no way he could spin his tails fast enough to lift him out of the line of fire in time.

Fortunately, though, there was someone in the crowd whose reflexes truly were that quick. Sonic took off at top speed, then, at the exact right moment, jumped into the air with his arms outstretched, gently scooping the fox out of the air, and carrying him in a graceful arc right over Eggman's robot and all of the weapons it was firing. With Tails in his arms, Sonic landed softly and gently placed the fox down on his feet on the other side of the robot.

It wasn't until Tails was set down on safe ground that he even looked around him to see what mysterious force had carried him away from certain doom, but when he saw the blue frame of his best friend standing over him, there was a mixture of relief and discomfort on the kit's face.

"_Sonic!_ Hey, hey! Great timing, ol' buddy!" exclaimed Tails, slapping Sonic on the hand in an awkward attempt to feign enthusiasm and hide his obvious embarrassment, although the half-hearted laughter he gave afterwards did not help his case. To change the subject, he pointed to the rose in Sonic's hand and asked, "Hey, where'd you get _that_?"

Predictably, Sonic wasn't in the mood to answer that question at the moment. "Never mind that! Are you okay?" he asked.

But before Tails could give an answer, another lethal red ball of light was fired in the heroes' general direction. Fortunately, this time, Tails was able to see it just in time to dive out of the way along with Sonic. Once the two picked themselves up off of the scalding asphalt surface, Sonic noticed a narrow alley between two buildings across the street from the one that Eggman had already smashed. "Say, buddy…why don't you head on in there and take a breather? I've got this handled," he said, pointing toward the alley.

Tails, dismayed, wasn't about to give up his ground just yet. However, when his eyes drifted over to that alleyway and noticed a giant dumpster sitting up against the wall of one of the surrounding buildings, his mindset changed. Sonic, keeping one eye on Eggman and one eye on his two-tailed cohort, was surprised to notice that Tails' facial expression made it seem as if a light bulb went off in his head, and he wasn't giving his typical "I can do this" spiel.

"Ooohhhhhh…I gotcha!" shouted Tails, as he revved up his…well, _tails. _"Hang on tight! I'll be finished in a sec!" Before Sonic could put his hand to Tails' shoulder for questioning, the fox had already propelled himself toward the alleyway, flashing a quick thumbs-up Sonic's way as he left.

Sonic just shrugged his shoulders. He didn't know what his friend was planning, but one thing he learned throughout their travels together was to just take Tails' word for it, or lack thereof, without any questions asked. The hedgehog knew now that he, as he would likely put it, had bigger eggs to fry.

"Hey, Eggman!" Sonic shouted, cupping his hands around his mouth. At this moment, the last few hundred members of the crowd who hadn't fled yet leaned even closer against the police barrier, and some of them pulled out their cell phones to take pictures. To these hardened spectators, Tails' short-lived fight with Eggman was akin to the undercard at a boxing match, and the main event was just about to unfold.

Strangely, Dr. Eggman made no verbal rebuttal to the hedgehog's initial words. The only response whatsoever that Sonic received came from the tiny little door on the robot's chest, which slid open to reveal a missile that was armed, lit, and aimed at the blue hero.

As usual, Sonic was undaunted. "I hate to interrupt the game of chicken you're playing with my friend, but I'm afraid I have to put a stop to your little egg-scavation project!" he shouted once more, putting special emphasis on the 'egg' part.

This time, he got a response from the egg-shaped doctor. "Back off, pest!" he shouted from his cozy little cockpit. "If my radar isn't lying, there's a Chaos Emerald in there just waiting for me! You are no issue for me today!"

"Oh, _really_?!" replied Sonic.

With that, Eggman pulled back a lever on his control console. The LED light on the front of the robot's missile turned from green to red, and with a brief beep, they shot forth from the cockpit, aimed squarely at Sonic. Sneering defiantly at the mad scientist, Sonic threw aside his rose to the sidewalk with one sweeping motion of his right arm, and then made a gesture with his right index finger, curling it towards himself, daring the missile to come to him.

It wasn't until that missile came within a few inches of blasting Sonic into oblivion that he finally made his move. He jumped five feet into the air to match altitudes with the rocket. Once at the apex of his jump, he curled his body around ninety degrees so that his backside faced the street below. There, his left leg delivered a thundering kick to the missile, knocking it end-over-end until it took off in the reverse direction, towards the robot that deployed it.

While Sonic curled back over to make a stylish three-point landing on the pavement, Eggman, in a last-ditch maneuver, jerked the control stick on his console all the way to the right. In response, the "torso" on his mech twisted around a full 180 degrees. Sure enough, the missile collided with the robot's reinforced metal backside, causing a small ball of fire to emerge from it.

"How 'bout _now_?" gloated Sonic as he admired the little fireworks display he made. This was one fire that he just couldn't help but enjoy watching.

Unfortunately, Dr. Eggman's last-second reflex prevented the robot from being damaged as much as it could have been, since the missile struck the durable layer of steel on the back, and not the fragile glass-windowed cockpit in the front. There was slight structural damage to the mech, but not enough to keep it from performing its functions.

"Fine! If that's the way you want it, you little punk, then I guess I'm gonna have to play _hardball_!" Eggman screamed at the top of his lungs, before pulling out a microphone from his console. "Egg Pawns! Forget the hedgehog! Attack these middling spectators!" he shouted into it.

"_**What?!**_" Sonic blurted out. It was almost as if his face had melted; confidence faded into shock with one turn of a phrase.

On cue, out of a small opening on the robot's lower back dropped several of Eggman's most common foot soldiers, the Egg Pawns. These orange robots weren't very imposing – in fact, they looked almost comical in their chubby, round, goofy-faced design, not to mention they were a few inches shorter than Sonic – but the fact of the matter was that they each held a weapon in their hands. These weapons ranged from laser rifles to spears to bazookas. And these armed mooks were headed straight for a crowd of citizens that were packed twenty-deep like sardines against the yellow police tape. And they just…wouldn't…stop…appearing.

This presented a catch-22 for the people who were too spellbound by the action to evacuate earlier. One: the only ones who were able to see the Egg Pawns coming were in the front of the crowd. Two: the people in the back, those who would lead the way out of danger, could not see the danger coming _and_ were blocking the way of the people who _could_.

Shifting his head back and forth rapidly between Eggman's machine and the crowd, Sonic received an added bit of conflict. "Oh, Soooooooonic…" taunted Dr. Eggman. "I can almost see that emerald's glow right nooooooooooowww!"

But it wasn't enough. As much as Sonic wanted to reach up and punch the Doc in the face for fighting dirty, he had already made up his mind and turned away from the malevolent machine. Like it or not, the safety of the people came first.

Thus Eggman was left alone to his little excavation project. He snickered as he noticed Sonic turn toward the approaching formation of Egg Pawns. Sonic had played right into his trap. For once, the doctor was _counting_ on Sonic attacking his robot troops. He knew that most of them were essentially being sent on a suicide mission. It made little difference to Eggman, since Egg Pawns were pretty much designed to be expendable. Losing a few of those robots wouldn't be much of a sacrifice if it meant getting the hedgehog off of his back _just_ long enough to find the treasure he was looking for.

While the demented scientist continued to dig through the rubble he caused, Sonic furiously rolled around in place, tearing up chunks of asphalt from the road surface. Once he finally let himself go, he took off like a rocket, rolling in a perfect arc on the road, and easily smashing through the first wave of Egg Pawns before they could get any shots off.

By this point, the front of the crowd finally started to push their way forward, but there was a crush developing between them and the confused people in the back. Some citizens were compressed against each other, desperately struggling for air. Quickly, a sense of intense panic rushed through the crowd, as a robot army, lined up in three perfectly-spaced rows of ten, was chasing them. As Sonic uncurled from his trademark spin attack to aim himself for another run through the next wave of Egg Pawns, he took a millisecond's glance at the crowd and, with a frustrated groan, noticed how little forward progress they had made in trying to escape.

As it usually did in these moments of dire peril, Sonic's hyperactive mind seemed to go into slow-motion. Only five words ran through Sonic's mind at this moment: _Get 'em in one go._

He was preparing to do just that, revving up for an attack that would take every last bit of his speed, concentration, and just a bit of dumb luck. And the spin dash just wouldn't do; he had to be running upright in order to see straight for this one. He threw his arms and right leg back as far as they could go, and was just about to take off for the blast of speed that would either make or break the day.

But at that moment, something strange happened.

All of the Egg Pawns, all in mid-step, just stopped moving. All of their robotic limbs had somehow been instantaneously rendered paralyzed. Many of them had been frozen in such awkward positions that they were no longer able to stand upright, and they fell harmlessly to the ground like bowling pins. As they hit the ground, flashes of light could be seen emanating from inside them, followed immediately by tiny, yet still decipherable wafts of black smoke emerging from cracks in their shells.

A dumbfounded Sonic just stood rooted to his spot, scratching his head, expecting the Egg Pawns to do something sneaky at any moment. When it became clear that nothing of the sort would happen, he turned toward Dr. Eggman, who, after finally turning away from his digging, had just about the same look of confusion on his face that Sonic did, only with an extra layer of frustration on top of it. Even the crowd, some of whom had noticed the Egg Pawns' sudden failure, had started to quiet down and decompress somewhat.

The once-chaotic scene had settled down _just_ enough for Sonic to hear a familiar sound coming from above…_whap-whap-whap-whap-whap-whap_. Even before he looked up, he knew who it had to be, but he still craned his stubby neck upward just to make sure.

And sure enough, it was Tails, hovering about one story above the ground, his bright-orange fur darkened by small cuts, bruises, and trash. He was holding what appeared to be a cardboard juice box, only with a few buttons on the front and an antenna-like apparatus coming out the top.

Speaking just barely loud enough to be heard over the sound of his own tails, the fox whispered, "_It's an EMP. They're all fried. Go, go, go!_"

Those last three words were all Sonic needed to hear. With his confidence recharged, the blue hedgehog flashed a thumbs-up toward his airborne friend, who responded with a hearty salute.

With that, Sonic entered his ball form and charged up a devastating, asphalt-melting spin dash, which hurled those few remaining solid chunks of road thousands of feet in all directions. It was a spectacle in itself; the grating, screeching sound could be heard from over a mile away. Even the petrified Dr. Eggman, in his sealed-off cockpit, could hear it overpower the sound of his robot's digging, and it was the last thing he wanted to hear. It had been burned into his brain, after many years of battling the hedgehog, that the sound of his spin dash charging up was a sign of incoming _pain_.

After that brief charge, the hedgehog took off in a swift blue ball of destruction, interrupting the shrill sound of the charge-up with yet another sonic boom. As par for the course, the doctor had no intentions of folding up and conceding defeat. As fast as he could move his surprisingly scrawny arms, Eggman grabbed two levers on his robot's control console and pulled them back as far as they could go. He was expecting some kind of tactile feedback from the command he had just input. Shaking, rumbling, something to indicate a response. Instead, nothing.

His stoic façade beginning to melt ever so subtly, Dr. Eggman frantically pulled back both levers twice more, with greater force. Still, nothing seemed to come from it. Sweat was starting to pump from the bald doctor's forehead as he, slowly, brought himself up from his comfy chair and looked out the front window of his cockpit. There, he saw exactly what he had feared – the drill-arms were stuck firmly in the rocky ground, and no amount of continued drilling would shake them loose.

Again, Eggman tried to set his robot free with another pull of the levers. But it was no use. The arms simply would not budge. For a fleeting moment, he hoped that somehow his Egg Pawns had somehow stopped Sonic in his tracks, but one brief glimpse of his peripheral vision told him that wasn't the case; they had all been left dismembered on the road.

Finally, Eggman decided to duck and cover underneath his desk. He picked a good time to do it, as just a second after he left his chair, he was pulled upward by the same rushing fireball that had engulfed him more times than he cared to count. Sonic, still spinning, had gone up and torn through the Egg-scavator like a hot knife through butter, leaving a hedgehog-sized hole smack-dab in the middle of the machine. It held on for just two seconds, before the inevitable fiery explosion struck.

When it did, it did so with a thunderous roar, one that smashed many of the weaker windows close to the scene. Metal fragments of the machine were blown sky-high by the blast, but fortunately, none of them landed in the dense crowd of citizens. Sonic, still airborne and in ball form, was blown upward by the force resulting fireball. He then popped out and performed a series of absolutely dizzying twists and flips, before landing perfectly on the ground in crouching position, both his arms sticking out parallel to the ground. He didn't even need to look behind him to see if he had truly finished Eggman off; the familiar hot wind at his back was all the proof that he needed. Once the explosion subsided somewhat, Sonic emerged from his landing position and waved his arms to acknowledge the rapturous applause he received from the crowd.

The Egg-scavator was now a pile of smoldering junk lying on the streets, except for its arms, which not even the explosion would jerk loose from the ground. As usual, Dr. Eggman had managed to escape the destruction with his life, with the help of his Eggmobile hovercraft. He didn't come out completely unscathed, however. The Eggmobile, as well as every portion of Eggman's body that wasn't covered by it, was charred and blackened by the explosion. But not even vicious second-degree burns on his face could prevent it from crumbling into a wrinkly frown.

"This isn't over, hedgehog!" shouted Dr. Eggman, as he reluctantly guided his Eggmobile slowly back to wherever his current base of operations was. "I'll be back for the Emerald _real soon_! You _will_ pay for this!"

"Cash, credit, or debit?" shouted Sonic as the Egg-mobile faded off into the morning sunrise, spewing a trail of smoke as it went. The quip prompted some chuckles from the crowd, as well as himself, but also more than a few groans.

Once Eggman faded completely out of view, Sonic immediately turned and rushed over to Tails, who finally came down from the air. Despite his battered appearance, Tails walked up to his friend in high spirits. Just the smile on the kid's face was enough to calm any worries Sonic might've had about his condition. But even more striking than Tails' infectious enthusiasm was the foul stench of his fur, which caused Sonic to hold his breath right after he caught a whiff, though he tried in vain to hide it.

"Man, that was _somethin'_! How ya holdin' up after all that? Better than you _smell_, I hope," said Sonic, in a decidedly more nasally tone than usual.

"Whew! Thanks, Sonic! That robot was a little too much for me. Hate to imagine what would've happened to this city if _you_ hadn't showed up!" said Tails.

"You kiddin'? If you weren't here, these guys might've gotten skewered! This one was all you, kiddo!" replied Sonic.

Immediately, the fox's already-tarnished fur grew red as he sheepishly chuckled to himself. "You're just sayin' that!" Tails shot back.

"Nope! _All_ you!" Sonic answered. "You hear all that cheering? That's for you too!"

"Aw, _come on!_" Tails said back.

In truth, though, the hedgehog _was _somewhat just 'sayin' that'. He did find himself capable of handling the Pawn invasion just fine by himself, even if he was backed up against the proverbial wall. It was just that every time Sonic gave Tails any sort of compliment, especially in public, he went into denial and started to sweat, as if he was being interrogated. So, naturally, Sonic went ahead and did it anyway whenever it was appropriate, just to torture his friend some, and just because he loved seeing that 'ticklish' look on his face.

"It was nothing, Sonic! Literally, all I did was tap into the radio frequency he uses to command his robots! I swear, he hasn't changed it in months!" Tails explained, his voice growing faster and more energetic with each word. Sonic rolled his eyes; he knew what was coming next.

"Lucky for us somebody threw out a perfectly good wireless mouse. Once I broke that open and fit the circuit board inside the juice box…which took longer than it should have, I will add…it was only a matter of time before I reverse-engineered it to transmit a signal that the Egg Pawns wouldn't know how to interpret, which would incapacitate them on contact!" he continued.

As Tails became lost in his own rambling, Sonic noticed a familiar flower sitting right on top of the sewer grate just to his right, and leaned over to pick it up.

"…so it's not in the _strictest_ sense an electromagnetic pulse, but it effectively acted as one. If it were a _real_ EMP, though, it probably would've shorted out all—"

"Uh, Tails?" Sonic asked.

"Yeah?"

"You've got a coffee filter stuck to your hair."

Tails looked up, noticed it stuck to one of his bangs, and, with a yelp, flicked it off. "So, anyway, I set 'em up, you knocked 'em down, same as usual. High five?" he said, holding up his hand.

"Whoa! No touch just yet, buddy! Not 'til after you take a _bath!_" Sonic joked. For some temporary relief from the undesirable musk, he held his rose up close to his nose and took a deep, relaxing whiff. Tails observed, curiously.

"Y'know, you _still _haven't told me. Who'd you pick that for, anyway?" Tails teased.

"Oh…nobody in particular. Just a little souvenir I picked up ten minutes ago on my trip to the mountains."

"Which ones?"

"I dunno. Some mountains," Sonic shrugged.

At that moment, Sonic felt one of his quills being pulled away from him, which prompted from him a brief yelp. He then jerked his neck around to see what it was, only to find that a whole TV news crew had gathered around him and Tails, with two cameras trained closely on them, and a young male reporter shoving a microphone (adorned with a "News 3" mic flag) in the hedgehog's face. Immediately after Sonic noticed him, he began his report.

"Kurt Manatee here live on the corner of Castor and Pollux, where once again, Sonic the Hedgehog has saved the city from annihilation…" he began. At that moment, Sonic, who was only halfway on camera, looked in Tails' direction. As he expected, the fox had awkwardly slinked off-camera.

"Uhh…I'm gonna go…perform clean-up duty, okay?" he whispered in Sonic's direction.

It was a difference that Sonic had learned to adapt to. While he liked sticking around in the limelight, at least for a split-second, Tails actively melted in it. He much preferred to be the guy behind the camera, not in front of it. Sonic knew to keep it that way in public settings.

Leaning off-camera, he whispered to Tails, "We're still going out for lunch later?" Tails gave an energetic nod, just before he spun his twin appendages and took off in the direction of the piles of charred robotic wreckage in the streets. Sonic's attention turned back to the reporter.

"…though most of this three-story office building behind me was eradicated in the attack, reports say the building was unoccupied at the time, and there have been no reported injuries," the field reporter continued. Sonic exhaled with satisfaction and relief at that news. "I am here now, live with the blue hero himself. Sonic, do you have any words for us?"

"You bet," said Sonic. Both cameramen moved in closer and zoomed in on the hedgehog. "I'd love to take all the credit, but fact is, I got a lot of help today. I can't say who, but I couldn't have done it without him." Then, pointing to the camera, he winked his left eye and remarked, "You know who you are…"

"Keepin' it classy, our hero…" said the reporter. "Anything else to say?"

"Just one more thing," he answered, as he forcefully yanked the microphone towards himself. "This one's goin' out to Dr. Eggman, just in case he managed to get that floating hunk of junk back to his hideout. If you're watching this, just know that you are sunk. You couldn't find that Chaos Emerald today, and _we've_ got the other six of 'em! Even if you _do_ find that last one before we do, we can take it back in no time at all! And if _we_ find the last emerald first, then you, sir, have _no chance! None. _Zilch. That's all from me." He finished by flashing a salute to the cameras.

"Strong words, indeed," said Kurt, taking his microphone back. "And finally, what's the stat—"

But before he could finish, he and his fellow crew members were blown back by a harsh wind that also blew Kurt's "Channel 3 News" cap off of his head. When they regained their stability, they were all quick to notice the sudden lack of blue hedgehog standing right next to them.

"Well…uh…that's all from here. Reporting live from downtown, I'm Kurt Manatee, Channel 3 News." Kurt concluded, awkwardly.

"Aaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnd…we're clear!" said the cameraman on the left.

With that, the boom microphone operator retracted his mike, as the whole crew began to move all of the mobile broadcast equipment back into their "Channel 3 News" truck. Kurt, now aware that the camera wasn't "hot", as they say in the business, shuffled toward the truck with an expression of dismay.

"I swear to God, he always does that to me," the crestfallen reporter said. "This is gonna look embarrassing on my demo tape…"

"Well, look at the bright side. At least we beat Action News Eight to the story this time," said the cameraman.

But he and Kurt then turned around and exchanged confused looks after noticing that the second cameraman at the scene was taking his shoulder-held camera into the very same alley where Tails had hidden earlier. "Uh…Jon?" Kurt asked cameraman one. "Is that guy even with us? I don't think he came here in the truck. And why the heck would he wanna photograph some moldy ol' dumpster?"

"I dunno," Jon replied. "Probably just some freelancer lookin' for work." He, Kurt, and the rest of the crew then climbed into the back of the truck.

What they didn't know was that the peculiar fellow they had pointed out was now on the other side of said dumpster, kneeling down to avoid detection. He placed his oversized video camera on the ground, pulled a wrist communicator out of his pocket, and spoke into it.

"Red Falcon to base. This is Red Falcon," he whispered. "I've got all the dirt I need on the fox. We'll have his location soon. Will return to base ASAP. Over."

* * *

><p><strong>So, there's chapter one of DRWS. Again, if you have ANY sort of critiques for this, then PLEASE write me a review. Reviews will keep this story (and my peace of mind) afloat.<strong>


	2. The War Room

**Okay, so now that this story has a clear direction, I have gone ahead with chapter two. It's funny how chapter one was written in the span of over one month, and yet this was written in two days. I guess I've had this fanfic at the front of my mind since I uploaded chapter one, schoolwork be damned. There's not gonna be a whole lot of action in this chapter, or any of the next few. It's just gonna be plot setup until about chapter seven. I apologize, since much of this chapter is just a recap of chapter one from a different angle, but this scene needed to be in the story, or else it would fall apart.**

**Special thanks to ShinyShiny9 and Ghostkid33 for their glowing reviews! Here's to many more, hopefully!**

**Disclaimer: Not only do I not own Sonic, but I've also been told that "Dumpster" is a copyrighted trademark owned by Waste Management. I hope they don't find out about this, because I used the word four times in this chapter alone.**

* * *

><p>Uncharacteristic of the typical situation in the Presidential House's fifth-floor briefing room, one man sat alone at one end of the table, twiddling his thumbs against its faux-wooden surface. As he waited for his guest, his bald spot began to sweat profusely, and pit stains began showing through his green jacket.<p>

_Jeez, I wish I didn't have to wear this whole damn outfit. At least let me take off all these medals, _he thought. _But no. I __**have**__ to look dignified for the big cheese_. _It gets __**STIFLING **__this time of year in Central City! You'd think that bone-headed secretary would at least turn on the friggin' air conditioner! _

He checked his watch. 11:29 AM and 55 seconds, it read. _He had better be on time, because I am not staying in this boiling room for an extra minute! If I wanted to go to a sauna, I would have __**asked**__ for a leave of absence!_

After five more seconds of thumb-twiddling and humming, the silence was broken by the unholy sound of the door's hinges creaking to life.

"Commander Atkinson…" a faceless, sunglasses-wearing security guard said in monotone as he walked through the door. "…the President of the United Federation."

The guard then stepped aside, revealing the tall, gangly form of the President himself. Despite his undeniably presidential attire and status, his walking stance and the oversized mug of steaming coffee he was carrying betrayed his comparatively young age and demeanor. In the adjacent hallway, a brass band played the President's customary entry hymn, which was played whenever he made any sort of appearance at a meeting or public gathering, although it was clear from the President's facial expression that he did not approve of how they were playing.

"Ah, President McCafferty. On time as usual, I see," remarked Atkinson, his "south country" accent showing, as he saluted the leader of the free world. "Have a seat on the other end there."

"Thank you, Commander," McCafferty obliged, returning the salute. The security guard quietly stepped outside and closed the door, standing in front of it with a semi-automatic rifle in his hand, just in case. He was taking all the precautions necessary for a top-secret meeting such as this.

The President took the first sip of his morning coffee, briefly muttering to himself. "Darned band…I just got up. Why do they play so loud? I get headaches…" He then cleared his throat and got to the point. "Now, then, Commander…I heard you had an update for us on the negotiations with Aerodyne Systems. I assume the matter has finally been worked out?" he asked.

"Actually, sir, I have good news and bad news for you on that front. The bad news is that the negotiations have once again stalled," Atkinson regretfully informed.

"Oh, terrific. What _now_? Did the CEO take a leave of absence because he had to _iron his dog_?" the President asked, with more than a little resentment in his voice.

"Thankfully, no, not this time," said Atkinson. "The guy is actually taking my calls now, for a change. But now Mr. McDonnell-Big-Shot-Moneybags is ignoring our demands!" Atkinson shouted, his voice growing in exasperation with each word. "I keep tellin' him, 'This is the best we can offer!' And he's all, 'We need more because the uranium control rod thingamahoozits'…_GAAAHHH!_"

"Okay, settle down, Commander," said the President. Commander Atkinson settled down into a fit of hyperventilating. "This is deeply troubling. We put our trust and 40 billion credits in their hands for the sake of our national security. You'd think they'd show some damn urgency."

"Well, I guess that they're not too _fond_ of the budget you set aside for us…" said Atkinson, partially under his breath.

"The good news had better be _good_, Commander. Have you located an alternative source for our WarDroids?"

"Ahhhhhhhhhh…now, _that's _where the good news comes in," answered Atkinson.

He then opened up his laptop computer, which was connected to a projector mounted high on the ceiling of the briefing room. A live picture from his screen was being projected onto the specially-made silver screen that hung over the back wall. Only one window, the file explorer, was open on the laptop, and it was currently browsing through the "Videos" folder.

"You're probably aware of the attack on Station Square from a few hours ago," said the commander, as he hovered the cursor over a file labeled 'STATION SQUARE FOOTAGE – CONFIDENTIAL'. "Well, thanks to one of our stealth operatives, we have acquired some shots of the incident that were _not_ seen on any of the nightly news programs."

Atkinson double-clicked on the file, and on cue, a video began playing in a separate program. He and the President both turned their chairs toward the back to watch. The video being shown was, as Atkinson said, from the battle between Sonic and Dr. Eggman from earlier that day, but had the President not been told, he might not have been able to figure that out. The footage was shot from the back of the all-important alley on Pollux Street, just to the left of the dumpster. The issue was that Dr. Eggman's digging robot was partially obscured by the building on the right, whereas Sonic and Tails were barely-visible, out-of-focus specks on the left.

"The answer to our problem lies in this footage," declared the Commander.

"Wait, wait…" began the President. "I'm not getting your point here. Are you saying…that we should recruit Dr. Eggman to build _our_ robots? Are you insane?! That man is the very menace we're trying to eliminate! If we were able to catch him, he would be in federal prison by now!"

"No, no, Mr. President. Dr. Eggman has nothing to do with this plan whatsoever," replied the Commander. "Just wait."

After a few seconds, the yellow speck began to hover into the alley. As he got closer, the cameraman finally zoomed in and focused, so Tails was now perfectly visible on the screen as he flashed his thumbs-up back at the confused Sonic.

"Isn't that Tails?" the President asked. "You know, the…the mutant squirrel thing that always follows Sonic around?"

"I'm pretty sure that's a _fox_, sir. But yes," answered Atkinson.

"Oh, now you've _really_ lost the plot," said the President. "First, you put all our money into this unmanned soldier experiment, discharging half of our reserves and leaving my hands tied. And now you're suggesting that we bring that kid in to fix the holes in our national security?"

"You'll be surprised. Here's where you should pay attention."

On the screen, Tails dropped from the air, making a graceful headfirst dive straight into the open dumpster. Again, when he went in, he disappeared from view, and all that the two could see on the screen were assorted bits of trash that Tails tossed into the air as he scavenged for anything mechanical.

General Atkinson watched this footage intently, while President McCafferty rolled his eyes, unable to find any meaning in what he was being shown. In the video, the commotion between Sonic, the Egg Pawns, and the huge crowd of onlookers could be heard in the background, but little was happening on the screen itself. McCafferty twiddled his fingers on the desk, waiting for something to happen.

And then, a faint sound could be heard from the two mega-sized speakers that hung from the ceiling. It was partially muffled by the metal walls of the dumpster, but both men in the room could clearly hear from the video the words, "Ah-_ha! _Jackpot!"

It was here that the President finally sat up normally, intrigued by the context of what he had heard Tails say in the video, but still skeptical.

He needed only to wait twenty seconds to see the payoff. At that point, Tails finally poked his head from over the walls of the dumpster and soared into the air, his twin tails spewing assorted bits of garbage in every direction. One airborne candy wrapper landed on the lens of the camera itself, before the camera operator flicked it off and focused back on the airborne fox.

McCafferty noted that Tails was now holding some kind of rectangular device in his right hand. "What is _that_?" he asked.

"We don't know what it _is_ exactly," said Atkinson, "But we sure do know what it _did_."

At that moment, as the camera zoomed in to catch up with his flight, the footage showed Tails pushing a button on his device. Instantaneously, in the background, every charging Egg Pawn on the screen stopped in their tracks and fell to the ground paralyzed.

"Was that…?" the President stopped short of asking.

"Yes. From this exclusive footage, we can conclusively determine that this _kid_ built some kind of signal jammer to instantly deactivate some of the most sophisticated robots ever designed, in less than a minute, with nothing but random garbage." Atkinson declared.

"Hmmmmmmmmmmm…interesting…" said the President, now slightly more intrigued.

"I think we've found a gem in the rough, Mr. President."

"You may well have. But still…he's, what, nine? Even if he is comparatively intelligent, do you not realize how embarrassed we would be in the international community for giving such a big responsibility to a prepubescent little kid?"

"Hey, how do _you_ know he's prepubescent? Maybe those furries _mature_ quicker than we do…if you know what I'm saying…"

"_That's not the point!_" shouted the President, before gagging in disgust at what he had just heard. "My point is, you're asking this kid…well, I'm guessing he's a kid, anyway…to somehow equal the output of a multinational, billion-credit corporation like Aerodyne. I'm all for saving money, but this just has 'national fiasco' written all over it! And besides, our problem is related to national defense and robotics. Surely that little contraption of his does not carry over into either of those fields."

"Well, then, that brings me to part two," Atkinson stated as he clicked on the file explorer sidebar to bring up the pictures folder. Once there, he entered a subfolder labeled "Presentations," which led into another one labeled "4-19", which finally led him to double-click on a rather large JPEG image file.

"Just a week ago, we caught this plane flying through G.U.N.-sanctioned airspace at about 550 miles per hour. We first thought it was one of Eggman's, and I had my boys prepared to intercept, but when we got a good look, we deemed it no threat. Our surveillance cameras captured this quick image before it flew off," said the Commander, who then double-clicked on the image to pull it up to full size.

President McCafferty gaped at what he saw on the projector screen. It was a low-angle shot of a small, two-seated biplane, in blue and yellow livery. Normally, it wouldn't have been anything to write home about, except that in this picture, that same orange-yellow fox from the video clip was in the pilot's seat, and despite the high speed he was traveling at, noticeable by his ears flapping wildly in the wind and the heavily-blurred clouds in the background, the calm demeanor on his face betrayed no discomfort over the handling of the plane. Even more striking was the plane's form; the wings were folded into an X-shape, presumably for aerodynamic purposes. Most striking of all, there was no smoke or any kind of exhaust coming out of the back of the plane, only a trail of blazing green energy. These G.U.N. surveillance cameras were equipped with ultra-high-resolution sensors and high-speed shutters, so they managed to capture every detail.

"A…are you _sure_ that this is his work?" asked the President.

"You see that sticker on the wing?" Atkinson asked. He pointed to the bottom of the left wing on the screen, where Tails had placed his personal logo: two tails emerging from inside a golden ring. "That's his, all right. I've kept my eye on this kid for a week, and lemme tell you, he's got some kind of freakish knack for technology. It's almost scary. But if we can get him to adapt that design into a WarDroid, we would have the ultimate unmanned fighting machine!"

"Impressive," the President finally conceded. "No wonder Sonic keeps him around. However, I still need time to measure if this idea of yours is really worth the risk."

"Well…think of it this way, Mac," said Atkinson, surprising the President with the informal use of his name. "This one tiny plane is still more than the Aerodyne Corporation, with their billions of credits, has produced for us in the past year. See, here's the beauty of this plan."

The President leaned in, listening intently.

"Kids don't strike," began the Commander. "Kids don't hold out for cash, or lay off hundreds of employees in a mass sacking, or get prosecuted for alleged accounting irregularities. They don't know what any of that means. And if you hate all of the red tape B.S. from Aerodyne as much as I do, Mr. President, you'll take this chance. Are you in, or not?"

There was no immediate reply from President McCafferty. Instead, silence permeated Briefing Room #5. At one end, the General tried his best to keep a stoic face on, despite the fact that if you listened closely, you could hear the sound of his rapid heartbeat reverberate off the walls. Meanwhile, at the other end, the President was trying desperately to come to a decision based on all that he had heard. Was he acting out of wide-eyed idealism? Were there holes in his story? Well, he _was_ the commander of G.U.N. He did, after all, take an oath to adhere to the truth at any cost, as part of the initiation ceremony. So McCafferty had little choice but to give his underling the benefit of the doubt.

As the stoicism began to melt off the Commander's face with each second of deep thought, the President finally broke the silence. "100 million credits," he said. "That's all the budget I'm giving you. If you have to use all of it at once just to get that guy on our side, then do it."

"Excellent, sir," said Atkinson, as he made a sigh of relief. "I'll have one of my best men on it by the end of the day."

In a show of respect, some of it painfully forced, both men reached over the table and shook hands. "This crazy plan of yours had better work, Commander. I'm putting a lot on the line here," said the President.

"Well, taking risks is what got you into the Presidential House in the first place, wasn't it?" asked the Commander, half-joking.

The two shared a quick, awkward chuckle, before McCafferty interrupted it with another stern warning: "Don't let me down."

Commander Atkinson struggled to pull his hand from the vice-like grip of the President, who turned around to leave the briefing room. However, he was in for a shock when, immediately after he opened the door, the band suddenly started playing the presidential hymn once again. McCafferty almost jumped out of his pants from the surprise.

"**GAH! **Consarn it! Can't you people give me a warning next time?!" shouted the President as he stomped off down the halls. He got no reply from anyone in the band, which just kept playing on.

The noise was dampened slightly when the door blew shut, leaving Commander Atkinson alone in the briefing room. Now free of intrusion, he pulled a communicator out from his pants pocket and slipped it over his left wrist. Holding down the "call" button, he whispered into it.

"Psst! Red Falcon. Red Falcon, this is Head Honcho. Repeat, this is Head Honcho. Do you have a lock on the fox's location?"

A crackly reply came from the communicator's built-in speaker. "_Yes, sir. We lost the signal for a while, but now my tracker says that he's somewhere in the Mystic Ruins."_

"Excellent! Tonight we'll send one of our heli-troops in to drop off the package. You have done your job well, Red."

"_But…sir…wouldn't it be better if we just sent—_"

"She is not necessary for this!" Atkinson shouted into his communicator.

"_Eep…yes, sir. Heading back to base now. Over,_" the mysterious 'Red Falcon' said, just before the transmission ended with a click.

Nodding to himself, Atkinson reached into his other pants pocket and pulled out a miniature notebook, which for convenience's sake had a pen inserted through the metal rings at the top. The commander flipped to the first page, took out the pen, and put a checkmark next to the words he had already written on the first line: STAGE 1.

* * *

><p><strong>I must've gone overboard with the British slang in this chapter, didn't I? I don't know why I included all that. I am, after all, a blue-blooded Amurrican. Anyhoo, thanks for reading, and if you like (or don't like) what you've read so far, feel free to leave a review! Actually, you know what? DON'T feel free to NOT leave a review. Reviews make my day, good or bad. Be sure to stick around, because things are about to get a WHOLE lot bigger!<strong>


	3. Package Delivery

**So, here's chapter three. I haven't started yet, but I'm almost 100% certain I'm gonna have a much better time writing this one than the last chapter. It's a lot more fun for me to write my takes on established canon characters than to create my own. Oh, and to answer a question that no one will ever ask, the President and the G.U.N. Commander are **_**not **_**the same as the ones from the Shadow game. Just clarifying. Also, I've gone ahead and made edits to the first two chapters to cover up a little proofreading error I made.  
><strong>

**Oh, and by the way, **_**italics**_** indicate the characters' inner thoughts.**

**What I REALLY want feedback on is how I handled Tails' characterization in this chapter. If you write a review, PLEASE give me your opinion on that first. Did I make him a little too selfish, or too bland, or too anything? Please let me know in your review!**

* * *

><p>On nights like this, the Mystic Ruins was the antithesis of the city that lay nearby. At this time of day, life in Station Square never seemed to stop at all, as proven by all the city lights that could be seen from all the way across the Great Bay. But in the Mystic Ruins, there were no cars honking, no vendors shouting, no sirens blaring. Here, you could simply immerse yourself in the good ol' outdoors – that is, if you could put up with hacking your way through miles of redwoods to get here in the first place. But, then again, the fact that the Ruins were surrounded on three sides by a forest and on the fourth side by the bay was the main factor in their unique ambiance of solitude.<p>

The name "Mystic Ruins" is, in a way, a misnomer. It wasn't so much the ruins that were mysterious – archaeologists had long since concluded that they were made up of fallen pieces from nearby Angel Island – but it was the general atmosphere of the place, as well as its secluded location, that made it mystical. On some evenings, Angel Island would block out the sun until it set, creating this weird darkness all over the Ruins during the evening before the sky even turned black.

It was so out of the way that only frogs, crickets, birds, and other assorted forest life called it home. The only exception was a certain orange fox who could make his way over the thick forest. The tiny, one-room wooden shack, perched high atop what used to be some sort of echidna shrine, was a perfect match. Simple, unassuming, and out of the spotlight. The makeshift runway protruding from the edge of the cliff over the bay was also a dead giveaway.

But in the wee hours of the morning, this shack would be cast into the spotlight – that of a G.U.N. helicopter hovering about 200 feet above.

As the chopper, code-named "Black Lightning", descended from the sky, it got a brighter view of the house, but its blades began to blow the tops of the trees to and fro, sending birds scurrying away from their nests.

"We are now right over the drop zone, folks," shouted the pilot, Captain Burt Wittig, from his cabin. "It's go time!" One of the helicopter's passengers was psyching himself up for his upcoming mission, while the other two were tying a 300-foot long elastic rope to his waist.

"Final check, Hodges. Do you have the package?" asked a passenger holding a clipboard.

"Affirmative," replied Hodges, pointing to the zipped-up back pocket of his all-black jumpsuit.

"Lifeline tied properly?"

"Yes, sir," declared the third member of the crew, who then walked over and slid the door to the helicopter open, sending in a massive gust of wind.

The pilot had to guide the helicopter into just the right position for Private Hodges to jump out, calculating both its airspeed and the wind. Too far away from the sweet spot, and he would go swinging into either the trees or the rock formations, which would surely cause crippling injuries. After he was sure he was in a good place, the pilot shouted, "Jump!"

Hodges did so, with his rope tied securely around his waist, keeping him from falling straight to the ground. He hung awkwardly outside the helicopter for a brief moment, until his two crewmates gradually uncranked the rope to lower him down. He kept a cool head during the entire trip down; he was a G.U.N. heli-trooper, after all, and he had completed dozens of these missions in training.

After about five minutes, Hodges was safely set down on the ground about 175 feet below the chopper, just a stone's throw from Tails' front door. The helicopter was hovering low enough that his rope had more than enough slack to reach the house, so all that was left was to drop off the "package".

As he reached the front door, Hodges noted to himself how…rustic the place looked compared to what he had been told to expect. For a brief moment, he doubted that he hit the right spot, but the rapid beeping of his wrist device insistently indicated that he was indeed approaching the place where Tails had been tracked to.

Shrugging his shoulders, he pulled out all of the equipment that G.U.N. entrusted to him for this mission: a green cube about the size of a crouton, and a single key wrapped around a chain. It looked like just another key, but it was actually a special tool straight from the G.U.N. laboratories that was called the WonderKey 3000. It was comprised of millions of microscopic metallic fibers that, once the key was inserted, fused to the exact curvature of the keyhole, making it able to unlock any door imaginable.

However, once he lifted the key to the door, he noticed something important. There was no keyhole of any kind on the front door. Instead, there was an oddly-shaped black box protruding from the door, with a miniature camera on it.

His secret agent experience showing, Hodges recognized it immediately as a retinal scanner and cursed to himself. The retinal scanner equivalent of the WonderKey was still under development, and so he did not have one on him. But just to test the scanner's effectiveness, he kneeled to the ground and lowered his eye to the camera. Immediately after his eye went into the camera's view, two tiny red beams of light went up and down, scanning the details of the eye. One second later, a harsh beep resonated from the tiny speaker on the box, followed by a brief computer-generated male voice uttering the word, "Denied."

Hodges sighed to himself. Like it or not, it was time for the backup plan. Still kneeling, he pulled out the cube and made an attempt to slide it under the front door. Alas, while there was a slight crack under the door, it was not wide enough. The cube would simply not fit through, no matter how hard he pushed on it.

Dumbfounded, Hodges simply said to himself, "…Really? We've gotta do _this _now?"

Sighing once more, he pulled out his _backup_ backup plan – a pre-written note on an eight-by-five card, which he had been told to prepare just for this purpose. Hodges swallowed his dignity as he took the note card and slid it under the door. Thankfully for him, it managed to fit under. As he stood back up, Hodges counted his blessings that there wasn't a trap under the door that would slice his hand off, or some other crap like that.

Picking up the two unnecessary items and placing them back into his back pocket, he opened up his wrist communicator and spoke into it. "Heli-Trooper One to Black Lightning. Mission was successful."

"Did you deliver the package?" asked the pilot over the communicator.

"…Yeah," Hodges said sheepishly, not proud of the rather undignified way the mission ended.

"Wonderful. Begin re-hoisting procedure now!" he shouted to the two soldiers in the back of the helicopter.

"Just don't yank too hard this time, okay, fellas? My obliques are still sore from last time," Hodges asked.

Without a word, the cable tied to his waist whisked him up toward the sky, as Hodges left the ground with a loud yelp.

It took a few minutes, but he was brought back onboard safely. Once the "drop door" was shot, the pilot flipped a switch that turned off the helicopter's spotlight, and then used the on-board microphone to send a message back to base.

"Black Lightning to base. Mission completed. Package delivery was successful. Over," said Wittig.

"Excellent work, Captain," replied mission coordinator Peter Stephenson, who was stationed at a radar console back at G.U.N.'s main headquarters.

"So…now what do we do?" asked Wittig.

"We wait," answered Peter. "If he gets the message, he'll come to the Spire tomorrow morning and…" Peter paused for a brief moment, before giving an anguished sigh and continuing. "…aw, who are we kidding? He'll probably freak out and throw the cube in the trash or something," confessed Peter. "This plan is ridiculous. I mean, we're bringing in this kid to help build our droids? Even if he takes up our offer, that would be like if we brought in some teenage gas station attendant and told him to help build a whole car from scratch. This is absurd. I tell ya, Atkinson's got a couple of screws loose, if you know what I mean. That guy-"

"Sssssshhhhhhhhhh…he might be listening right now…" whispered the Captain.

"Dude, it's 1 in the morning. I don't think he's listening to this," said Peter, speaking normally.

"Who knows? Maybe he goes over the tapes every day! I don't know!" whispered an exasperated Captain Wittig.

"Look…just fly your crew back to the base, so we can all go home and get some damn sleep, okay?" said Peter.

After taking a deep breath, the Captain gave his reply. "10-4. Taking us out of hovering position now. ETA to HQ, ten minutes. Over,"

And with that, the helicopter turned and headed back to G.U.N.'s main headquarters.

* * *

><p>Through all of the commotion that sounded around his one-room house during the night, Miles "Tails" Prower kept snoozing away, out cold on the inflatable air-mattress he set up in the middle of the floor, putting one of his tails to creative use as a pillow. After the events of the previous morning, he was bound to be exhausted. Since the machine used to inflate the mattress generated plenty of noise by itself, the sounds of the helicopter blades were not able to penetrate his ears.<p>

Eventually, the shrill ringing of a vintage mechanical alarm clock sounded, marking that it was 8:00 AM. At this moment, Tails finally awoke from his slumber. In one instant, the soreness of his muscles and the bruises he sustained during the fight almost 24 hours earlier came rushing back to him all at once.

A loud groan escaped his lips as he slammed the snooze button on the alarm clock and rolled out of bed. Instinctively, he rubbed the most painful areas of his body. His lower back, his right shoulder, his…sock?

Yes, Tails felt a weird stabbing pain on his left foot, just inside his sock. But this one felt like something was still in there, poking at his leg. Tails reached down, pulled open his sock, and took a look. As it turned out, the source of the pain was a tiny, yet sharp computer chip that somehow got lodged inside his left sock when he wasn't looking.

"Huh. Must've come from one of Eggman's. Aw, well. Into the pile you go!" chirped Tails, as he threw the chip behind his back and into a pile of discarded metal he left on the floor.

In this pile were all the pieces of Eggman's destroyed robots that Tails could carry back home in his arms, as part of what he called his "clean-up duty". These parts were all thrown randomly onto the floor, with no rhyme or reason and no sorting system whatsoever. As a matter of fact, the whole room was abundant with this kind of mismanagement. All over the floor there were tiny little gizmos, screws, computer chips, potato chips, crumbs, and empty soda cans scattered about, which he had to tiptoe through to get across his house.

But Tails didn't look at the discarded remains of Eggman's robots on the floor and see just an unkempt pile of metal. No, in his head, he saw his next big project rising out of the rubble, like a phoenix rising out of the ashes. Whatever this project was, although he could see it in his mind's eye, it had no distinct shape just yet. It was up to Tails to find that shape.

He stood like a statue, his head pointing fixedly at the pile of metal. The only things on Tails' body that were moving were his eyes, which darted back and forth as if he was stuck in REM sleep. He was stuck in his own personal void, far removed from the plane of reality he was occupying, where his mind was logging every possible combination of discarded robot parts that he could see at the front of the pile, looking for ideas for what exactly he could make out of them. These concepts were each formed in about a millisecond, then thrown out just as quickly. Some were clever ideas with no practical application, while others were just plain dumb. All of the rest...well...Tails had already used them.

But finally, after about ten seconds of crunching for ideas, Tails finally had a spark of inspiration. "Yes!" he shouted, while snapping his fingers, as he tended to do when he had a flash of brilliance.

The idea was just too perfect for Tails to let sit in his head for too long and risk forgetting it completely. He had to get it down on paper right away…right after he grabbed his daily breakfast, which only consisted of a can of Chaos Soda. Obviously it wasn't much of a nutritious breakfast, but he usually worked off the calories in the lab on any given day anyway, and he figured he needed the caffeine.

After guzzling down the whole can of his main fuel source in one gulp, Tails darted over to the other side of the room. He grabbed a spare blueprint from the stack he had sitting on his desk, then grabbed a pencil, twirled around once in his swivel chair, and got to work.

He quickly jotted down two rough – in every sense of the word – sketches of the idea: one from the front, and one from the side. On the top of the page, he wrote down the temporary name of this new invention concept: "X-Ray Gun (working title)". Simply put, the design consisted of the metal casing from one of the Egg Pawns' laser guns, only with the trigger, magazine, and barrels stripped off. On the bottom of the page, Tails wrote a bulleted list of components necessary for this invention: "LASER GUN", "HACKSAW", "HYPER-INTENSITY FLASHLIGHT (may need repair)", and "X-RAY EQUIPMENT (may need to DIY!)" One of the drawings depicted this modified shotgun being pointed at a wall, sending out a wide beam of energy that would somehow allow the user – in this case, a crudely-drawn depiction of Tails himself - to see the cranking gears on the other side.

Tails began grinning with satisfaction. This was the first practical idea he'd had in weeks. He wondered to himself how he didn't think of making one of these before.

With the first part of the process out of the way, it was time for the assembly process. But in order to begin working with small parts and bits, he needed to be able to see more clearly. He pushed against his desk, sending the swivel chair all the way across the room toward the only window in the lab. Straining his sore back, he reached up and pulled open the curtain, finally letting some light into the rather dank laboratory.

And much to his delight, for the second straight day, the weather was absolutely perfect. Not one cloud in the sky, and only the faintest hint of wind tickled the overgrown grass outside his house.

…_Actually, you know what? All of that can wait. I might just take a few laps over the city. Yeah, maybe it'll take my mind off this…yeowch!...searing back pain! _he thought.

After brief deliberation, he decided to ditch the Tornado and just use his own tails for this flight. After all, though he did get some thrills out of flying the Tornado 2, it just didn't match the sheer wonder of self-propulsion. There was just something…_poetic_ about being able to let the wind carry him like a feather, to float peacefully among the clouds, and to get swept away in the draft of the Flickies' V-shaped formation. These were the thoughts that ran through Tails' head as he ran toward the door, brimming with excitement, and also being careful not to crush any loose computer bits left on the floor.

However, as he was just about to turn the doorknob and exit, he noticed something just under the door that definitely wasn't there when he came in the previous night. It was a white sheet of paper, about the size of a typical note card.

Tails picked it up, expecting it to be an envelope. But no, it was just a white sheet of paper. No stamp, no return address, nothing on that card suggested that it was sent through the postal system. But then again, why would it be? After all, Tails technically had no postal address whatsoever. He was living off the grid.

_Aw, it's probably just Cream asking about that play-date, _Tails thought. _Man, I wish she'd come up to my place one of these days and just ask me in person. It would be much less complicated that way._

Tails held the note up to his face, expecting to see Cream's exquisite cursive handwriting. But when he turned it over, he was gobsmacked to see what really was on the other side. As it turned out, this note was not hand-written at all. Instead, it was _typed_. And not with a regular old typewriter, either. The font looked more blocky and futuristic and business-like than what usually came out of a typewriter, sort of like something you'd see on the text crawl at the bottom of the screen during the news.

But that was the least of it, as Tails would find out as soon as he read the first line.

**DEAR MILES PROWER,**

It took only this first line to make Tails' face turn white with shock. _But…how did these people find my real name? That's impossible! Only Sonic knows my real name! Who could have sent this?_ He swallowed his sudden dread and continued reading.

**YOUR RECENT ACTIONS HAVE COME TO OUR ATTENTION. **

**WE HUMBLY REQUEST YOUR PRESENCE AT OUR **

**HEADQUARTERS A.S.A.P. FOR AN INTERVIEW. IN **

**ADDITION, BRING YOUR AIRPLANE SO THAT WE MAY **

**EXAMINE IT. WE WILL MEET ON THE ROOF OF THE SPIRE**

**AT 10:00 AM SHARP.**

As stunned as he was at this out-of-nowhere proposition, the biggest shock of all came when he read the signature.

**SINCERELY,**

**MORLEY ATKINSON**

**COMMANDER OF GUARDIAN UNIT OF NATIONS.**

And right next to that, a little sticker with the G.U.N. logo, which mostly consisted of the letters "G.U.N." circling around a globe, was plastered. As if to prove that the letter was genuine, it was one of those holographic stickers that changed colors when the viewing angle and lighting changed.

Still, too much fear was running through Tails' mind for him to even question the letter's legitimacy. At this point, even the sensations of soreness he once felt all over his body had now vanished. There was now nothing but adrenaline-fueled shivering. He began pacing back and forth across his house, subconsciously hyperventilating.

_Am I getting indicted? What would G.U.N. even want with me? What did I even do recently? I got my permit renewed, I short-circuited some Egg Pawns, I restocked my fridge…what else was there? _Tails thought. Then, a realization hit the fox square in the gut.

"Oh, right…_that…_thing." he muttered to himself.

Tails then took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, and bowed his head in disbelief. "Well…I guess I'd better go face the music, then…" he sighed to himself. With that, he slumped back through the house, through the door and into the garage.

As opposed to the house itself, which Tails had found unoccupied one day, the garage was added on later, built entirely from scratch using some leftover metal from Badniks that were destroyed by Sonic. The foundation wasn't aesthetically pleasing, but it was stable, which was all that really mattered.

This garage was where both iterations of the Tornado were stored side-by-side in two parking spaces. On the left was the newer model, the blue, X-winged Tornado II, as opposed to the original red propeller-powered biplane which was now merely being used for backup purposes. Based on the context of the letter, Tails had determined that he was better off taking the T2.

With a jump, he landed in the pilot's seat of the Tornado II, donned his pilot goggles, and buckled himself up, before proceeding with the mundane, but unfortunately necessary, pre-flight checks.

"Okay…flaps lowered. Fluid levels are A-okay. Rudders functional. Fuel levels…" He then looked over to the right of his seat, just below the armrest, where he had stored the plane's source of energy: the green Chaos Emerald. "…well, we should be doing pretty well on fuel," he finished. "Okay, then. _Tornado…power on!_"

At that moment, seemingly in response to those words, the Tornado II's engine purred to life. Various buttons lit up on the dashboard all at once, and the on-board display to Tails' right booted up. The fox took one last heaving sigh of discomfort, reached over to his right and yanked the throttle forward three-quarters of the way.

With a vigorous blast of green energy trailing from the back, the Tornado II instantly shot forth from the garage like a bullet, clearing the runway in two seconds flat before ascending skyward. Experienced pilot though he was, even Tails was taken aback by the sheer speed of the take-off. At the very least, ever since he installed that Chaos Emerald into the plane's engine, he had made so many of these take-offs that his skull had grown accustomed to the 11 G's that it was sustaining.

Once Tails reached an altitude of 5,000 feet, he leveled off the Tornado's ascent. Teetering right on the edge of the sound barrier, but not quite breaking it, it was going to be a smooth, quick journey downstate from Station Square to Central City. It would be his second trip there this week, but the first one that was intentional.

* * *

><p>The official headquarters of G.U.N. were easy to make out. For one, consider the shape. If the building's designers had intended to strike fear into the hearts of all who visited, it worked well. Nestled in a 300-acre complex in a middle-of-nowhere suburb of Central City, the twenty-story building painted in black was the centerpiece. Technically, it was just called the "G.U.N. Operations Complex", but most who work there or have otherwise seen the building simply call it "The Spire".<p>

Naturally, the roof of the building was equipped with a larger-than-life radar dish, designed to detect any intrusion within a radius of five miles. However, today, in addition to that security measure, four G.U.N. troops were stationed on each corner of the roof, each using their specially-made, high-powered binoculars to look towards the skies.

The guard stationed at the northwest corner pulled out his wrist communicator and relayed a report. "Janikowski reporting. I have something at 5:55 right ascension, 7 degrees 24 minutes declination."

"If it's about that cloud that's shaped like a bunny, I've seen it already," replied from Calloway, the southeast guard.

"Aw, man…"

"McKeever reporting. Still no sign of a green energy trail or whatever here. I tell you, whoever this guy is, he should have gotten here half an hour ago!" shouted the guard on the northeast corner.

"Yeah, well, according to the signal I'm getting from the tracker that Red snuck onto him, he still hasn't left his house yet! What gives? Was there a glitch?" asked Underwood, at the southwest corner.

"Let's face it. He ain't comin'." McKeever reiterated.

Just then, the blue sky in the southwest guard's binoculars was overcome by a sudden wave of green, taking him by surprise.

"Whoa!" he shouted, as he zoomed his binoculars out to get a better look, which revealed a trail of green energy piercing through the sky. "Guys, I think this is it!" he continued. He folded up his binoculars and stored them away in his jacket, before pushing a few buttons on his wrist communicator to redirect his call. "Underwood to Commander. I think our guest has arrived."

"Wonderful. And not a moment too soon," declared the raspy voice of Commander Atkinson himself. "I'll be up there right away to give him a proper greeting." With that, he signed out, and only static came through the listening end of Janikowski's communicator.

The men known as McKeever, Underwood, and Calloway proceeded to take off their binoculars and observe for themselves. Sure enough, they noticed the fast-moving green trail, as well as the blue plane at the front of it, descending from the sky. All four guards stood as still as statues, taking in the spectacle, although the two guards stationed at the south end of the roof were tempted to duck when they noticed how fast this thing was moving.

"Daaaaaamn. Wish our planes could shoot that green shit out," said Calloway.

But just as it looked as if the plane would overshoot the rooftop, the forward motion of the plane was miraculously curtailed. As green energy stopped trailing from the back, a second set of jets began firing a similar trail downward, slowing the plane down and allowing it to make a soft, helicopter-like descent. The four guards could all feel a sudden wind driving each of them toward the guard railing, as the plane landed safely on top of the giant "H" usually reserved for helicopter landings.

As soon as the engines came to a complete stop, the four made their way toward the helipad to get a close look at the mysterious jet. From their perspective, after routinely seeing some of the most enhanced fighter jets in the world pass over them day after day, they were surprised to note how small the plane was. It was almost like a crop-duster, only with the wings folded inward like an X, and with an engine that could apparently approach the speed of sound.

But they weren't truly shocked until they caught a glimpse of the plane's pilot, as Tails leaped out of the cockpit in all of his two-and-a-half-foot-tall, 90-pound glory. McKeever merely scratched his head, as they watched Tails take his helmet off and try to pitch his helmet and goggles back into the cockpit, only for them to bounce off the side of the plane back into his hands. He did make his shot on the second try, though.

"This is the guy?" McKeever whispered into Calloway's ear. "Didn't they say at the briefing that he'd be taller?"

Calloway merely shrugged his shoulders in response.

"I mean…I know that they're…y'know…furries and all, but…I could've sworn he looked taller on TV the other day…" McKeever continued.

Suddenly, his monologue was interrupted by a chirpy, young voice. "Uh…excuse me…sir?" asked Tails, who had walked up to Calloway and McKeever. The fact that his head was as high as their beltlines did not escape them. The fox pulled out the note card and continued. "Uh…I was told to show up here today. Could you kindly point me to Mr. Atkinson, 'cause I might've run a little late and…"

"_That would be me,_" a gruff voice said from the shadows.

The four guards, as well as Tails, looked over in that direction to see none other than Commander Atkinson, having just walked through the door leading to the roof. At his mere presence, the guards all snapped salutes in Atkinson's direction. Tails, not sure of what he should be doing and not knowing who this guy was, just followed suit with his own salute.

"The four of you are dismissed. Back to your regular positions," ordered Atkinson.

Janikowski, McKeever, Calloway, and Underwood all performed one more salute before deserting their posts and taking the same staircase down from the roof. As soon as they were out of the sunlight, they all shared a chuckle over the fact that "that Hodges dude" had to resort to "the friggin' note card".

Now it was just the commander and Tails on the roof, the latter of whom was starting to show obvious signs of discomfort. His brow began to sweat, even on this temperate day, as he began to blink rapidly and shift his head from side to side. He tried to compensate by chuckling to himself, but it only dug him a deeper hole.

"Uh…hi, Mr. Commander person, sir…" Tails began, before shifting into motor-mouth mode. "…if this is about that thing that happened last week…well, the thing was, I was just fiddling around trying to get my radio to work, fiddling…y'know…with the switches and stuff, trying to pick up the ballgame, and I wasn't looking where I was going, and next thing I knew, I ended up flying over the Spire! I got out as soon as I could. I swear, sir, next time I test my plane, I'll stay out of…"

"That's…not what this is about, Miles," said Atkinson, trying his best to give off a fatherly vibe.

"…it's Tails," he replied, with surprising sternness.

"Huh?"

"Oh! Sorry, it's just…" Tails answered. "…it's just that I get kinda worked up whenever people refer to me by that name. Please, just call me Tails. All my friends do. But…still, I'm sorry if I bothered you in any way, and I'll keep out of your…y'know…country-defending business from now on…bye!"

Tails then gave the commander a quick bow and walked back toward the Tornado II. But a hand on his left shoulder stopped him in his tracks.

"While we are on the subject of your plane…" began Atkinson. "…we've noticed a trail of green coming from your little flying machine. Would you care to explain that?"

Tails buried his face in his right hand for a moment before he began his explanation. "Yeah, that's something I've been trying to get rid of. Ever since I installed the Chaos Emerald in the engine, it's been leaving this trail of green light behind me. I'm pretty sure that was just a glitch in the firmware causing a whole bunch of excess Chaos Energy to be released from the back. I just haven't been able to find it yet, but I'm willing to bet I put a decimal point in the wrong place or something. Shoot, I always do that. I always mess up some mundane detail—"

"Ah! So it was Chaos Energy?" Atkinson asked.

_Why is this guy asking so many questions about me? _Tails thought. _Shoot…it's not like I can ignore him. He's G.U.N., after all…_

"Well…yeah," Tails explained. "As it turns out, I was able to get twice as much power out of my engine with that one Emerald than I ever could with diesel. It never runs out, and it leaves no exhaust, which I guess means that I've gone green! Heh heh…no pun intended, of course…but if the green wave is too distracting or something, I'll try to dial back the amount of—"

"Tails, how would you like to work for us?"

**SMACK!**

The fox went bug-eyed at what he had just heard. This had gone from interrogation to a job offer in no time at all.


	4. Meeting of the Minds

**Okay, so wholesale changes have been made to this story. The description has been tweaked to better reflect the actual plot, since aerospace technology does not play a part in any of this. In case you've been reading before this point and were confused about whether this is the same story, it is. I know that this is my first update in a while, but keep in mind that I didn't just take a break from this story. I've been writing this chapter for a month and a half. It's just that writer's block, seasonal affective disorder, and college issues got in my way. The next few chapters should come in a lot quicker than the first four. My biggest problem, though, was that I had trouble coming up with a consistent characterization and motivation for Atkinson. Now that I have one, though, we're off and running. In case you need a mental model for Commander Atkinson, think of Tommy Lee Jones' character from Captain America: The First Avenger. That's the face and voice that I had in mind when I was writing his dialogue and character movements. **

**Thanks to the people who have kept following this story, and I hope that this chapter pulls in some new ones. Oh, and special thanks to eh249, a Tumblr pal of mine, for sending in his own opinion!**

* * *

><p>By now, Tails was sitting across from Commander Atkinson in an unoccupied conference room on the top floor of the Spire. It was a scene of uncomfortable awkwardness, as each one waited for the other to say something, almost like some kind of aural staring contest. Tails couldn't even describe what he was feeling, other than utter shock. Strange as it was, he had somehow felt more unnerved now than when he thought he was actually brought to G.U.N. to be interrogated – fitting, since this room was probably used for its fair share of those. Forget butterflies, there were <em>killer<em> _bees _buzzing around in his stomach at this moment. It didn't help that Atkinson was almost three times his height, or that he was just staring straight ahead, almost as if he was actually glaring at the wall behind Tails just for existing.

"So…have you calmed down enough to discuss the deal yet?" asked Atkinson.

"I believe so. I've…oh…sorry, sir, I'm vomiting a little in my mouth…" answered Tails. He took a loud, vigorous gulp, letting Atkinson continue.

"Tails, I will be blunt. We've looked through your files, and what we've seen here has…" the Commander began.

"I…juh…hold on, I'm still trying to process all of this. Gimme a second…" Tails interrupted. To try and calm himself down, he grabbed a few pieces of mint candy from a bowl, which was presumably left on the table by the room's previous tenants. After briefly sucking on his favorite candy, he finally summoned the strength to ask one of the most powerful men in the free world a question. "So…wait. You called me here…because you wanted to offer me a job at GUN?" he asked, punctuating each word slowly. Notably, he pronounced the acronym as the actual word 'gun', which made Atkinson finally turn his head in Tails' direction.

"It's Gee-You-En," he replied.

"Huh?"

"G-U-N. Not 'gun'."

"Oh. I coulda sworn it used to be pronounced 'gun'…" Tails muttered.

"It was, but now we're pronouncing it by the letters. It's part of a P.R. thing…but anyway, we hope that you'll agree to the terms we have set for you." answered Atkinson.

"But…why _me_, of all people? Or…is this some kind of enlistment draft?" Tails asked.

"Mr.…uh, Tails, sir…" began Atkinson.

"Please, just call me Tails," the fox insisted again. "Sorry, it's just...peculiar to hear grown men call me 'mister'."

"Right…'Tails'. Anyway, we've been looking through your records lately, and we have been nothing short of impressed," said Atkinson, his deadpanned speech not conveying one iota of impression. He then pulled out a slip of paper from his pocket and unfolded it. "You are, as of now, eight years old, correct?"

"Uh…that is indeed true," answered Tails. "Uh, I turn nine in November, if that's important…"

"Well, according to this, you were accepted to Spagonia University recently. The youngest ever admitted to that school, if I remember correctly. You must've really impressed them over there."

"I guess I did," Tails admitted. "But, uh…I don't attend anymore. I had to drop out after Eggman broke the continents apart a few months ago. I still keep in touch with Professor Pickle every now and then, though—"

"_**And…**_" Atkinson interrupted forcefully, before shifting into a calmer monotone. "…you managed to obtain a Class D pilot's license at the age of six."

"Oh, yeah, I remember that," Tails said, his almost-robotic memory kicking into overdrive. "I was just worried that we'd get arrested for flying around without a license, so I just went to the office and took all the tests they told me to. I still have my license on me, if you want to see it."

"Let's keep this on topic, shall we?" said Atkinson. "Just yesterday, you were seen singlehandedly grounding an entire fleet of Eggman's robots with an electromagnetic pulse generator made out of nothing but random garbage from a Dumpster." the Commander finished.

_Somebody caught me on camera? Argh! Darned TV news crews! They really do finger anything with a pulse! _thought Tails.

"Well…I wouldn't quite say that," he responded. "I barely did anything. It was Sonic that did the hard stuff. All I did was push a button and make it a little easier for him, that's all. It wasn't really an EMP, either, I should note."

"It…wasn't?" asked the puzzled Commander.

"Not _technically_. It wasn't much more than a miniature radio transmitter built out of one of those wireless mice. You know, one of those battery-powered ones where you plug the little dongle in, and the mouse sends the signal to it? All I did was rewire it to send a short-range signal through a certain frequency to corrupt their memory, so it kinda had the same effect as an EMP would, but technically…"

"_That's_ quite enough, thank you…" said Atkinson.

"Ohh…sorry," said an embarrassed Tails, whose ears sagged as he sighed and tilted his head downward. "I ramble sometimes."

"The point is, such ingenuity is exactly what made us consider you in the first place," said Atkinson. "G.U.N. is always looking for the brightest minds out there to enter our organization, and we believe you fit the bill quite nicely, Tails."

"So I keep hearing," Tails replied. "That's what Sonic's kept telling me, over and over again. I thought he was just sayin' that to cheer me up all these years, but now other people are telling me the same thing, and…jeez, it's all so surreal to me."

"Well, believe it, son, because we are about to entrust you with a task of the utmost importance." said Atkinson.

"Okay, then. Lay it on me, sir," said Tails, purely from his gut. It wasn't until _after _he said those words that Tails even stopped to think about their meaning, but it was too late. He knew he had passed the point of no return.

"We have commissioned a whole new line of 'walker' robots for our-"

"Oh, _too cool_!" shouted the fox. His eyes seemed to grow three sizes at this news, his ears flew open, and his tails began to wag like crazy. The commander, annoyed with the many idiosyncrasies that the fox had shown so far, tilted his head to the side, as doubt crept into his mind about whether picking Tails up was actually a good idea.

"Oh, uh…sorry. Continue," muttered Tails, as he thought to himself, _Man, I am embarrassing myself here, aren't I?_

"…As I was saying, these robots will be used to buff up our national defense force. We'll be test running them in every phase of our armed forces – army, navy, and air force. When they roll out, they will be equipped with the most sophisticated guiding mechanisms, weaponry, and self-propulsion capabilities ever implemented. Once they're ready, we'll be able to keep guys like Dr. Eggman or that black doomy alien guy in line, or any unfriendly countries that would want to start something…"

Tails ate up every word coming out of the commander's mouth, as visions of these droids began to dance in his head. He imagined something not terribly unlike one of his own old creations, the Cyclone, a transforming robot with the ability to walk on its own - except that G.U.N.'s robots would more likely be built with a certain polish that his own creations lacked, that certain element that only taxpayer money could finance.

Meanwhile, Atkinson was still giving his speech. "…'cause these babies will put us ahead in the arms race once and for all!"

And with the words 'arms race', Tails' initial enthusiasm crashed and burned. His ears and tails immediately ceased wagging, and instead began to droop downward along with his mood. Still, he didn't want to disappoint the Commander, at least not yet. "…So, you want me for maintenance? Because I think I might be serviceable in that position..." he said.

"Perhaps I should've mentioned this, but...well, we haven't even started building these things yet," said the Commander. Tails' jaw dropped slightly out of confusion, as Atkinson continued. "We've had a…bit of a _scuffle_ lately with our current contractor. As such, we've been looking for an alternative source for our fleet. Are you up to the task?"

"Wait. You're saying you want me to…" The words felt heavy in Tails' mouth. "…_build_ these things?"

"Well, not necessarily _build, _per se," Atkinson answered. Normally, Tails would have felt the urge to point out how the commander had misused the Latin phrase, but at this moment, he was still in too much shock over this whole proposition to open his mouth. "Our entirely-automated facilities will mass-produce our WarDroids by the thousands. That is, once they've been designed and tested. _That_ will be your job - to design and build a working prototype."

Another surge of pain hit Tails' stomach, as the drooling excitement he once showed began to grapple with his sense of dread. He sat frozen in that chair for what seemed like another five minutes, trying to coax an answer out of his own mouth. As difficult as it was for him to accept the huge responsibility placed in front of him, for Tails to refuse the offer would essentially be flipping the bird right in the face of the world's most powerful government.

"Uuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhh…I don't know…" Tails said, slowly. "I might have to deliberate for a minute…"

The fox then rested his head on his chin, wrestling with his own conscience. As he was looking away, so too did Commander Atkinson, who opened up his G.U.N.-issued wrist communicator and pushed a little red button.

Finally, Tails came to a decision. Shaking his head, he said, "I'm…I'm quite sorry, good sir, but I must decline this proposal."

"You sure?" asked Atkinson, in a condescending tone of voice, apparently abandoning that 'caring father' appearance he was initially going for. "'Cause there's _biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig _money in this if you accept…" He then did the little "¢" sign with his fingers, indicating 'credits'.

"I'm sorry, sir, but I just can't do it. I mean...if there's an opening somewhere else in the tech department, I'll be happy to join, no problem! Thing is, though...just between you and me..." Tails gulped once more, before summoning the strength to admit his true reason for declining. "...I really...don't want...to be involved...in any arms races."

Commander Atkinson said nothing, only letting out a brief sigh before pulling out his still-open wrist communicator unit to push the red button twice more. Truth be told, it was a less hostile reaction than Tails expected to receive, which gave him a small measure of confidence in continuing to speak his mind, however meekly it came out.

"Look...you're asking me to supply weapons of war, and…that's really not my field. If I really do have this 'knack' for technology that people say I do...then I want to try and use it to _help _the world, not turn it into a battlefield. That'd just make me another Eggman. Thanks for the offer, but…uh…I've gotta split."

The fox then got up from his seat and shuffled toward the door, but not before Commander Atkinson grabbed one of his tails, stopping him. "Think of it _this _way," said the Commander. "These robots won't be instruments of war. In a way…they'll put an _end_ to war."

Tails' ears perked open out of sheer confusion as he sat back down. After all, how could anything explicitly called "WarDroids" possibly preserve peace?

"Tails, have you ever heard of the concept of 'mutually assured destruction'?"

"Uh...isn't that the board game where you try to conquer the world?" asked Tails. Noticing Atkinson's glare, he let out an awkward chuckle and added, "Sorry. I'm a tech geek. I'm not up on military strategy."

"Mutually assured destruction is one of the most basic tenets of national defense," explained Atkinson. "Basically, it means that if you build up an arsenal with the capability to completely obliterate an enemy's country, they'll know they don't stand a chance against you, and they won't mess with you anymore."

"Oh, I see…" replied Tails. "…they won't take the risk that you'll use the weapons on them!"

"Now you're catching on," Atkinson said.

Just like that, as the Commander seemed to come out of his gruff shell, Tails' smile returned. He could sense he was starting to get on the same page with the military big-wig sitting across from him, something that seemed impossible to him when they first met on the roof.

"Your main mission here...should you choose to accept it...is to leave an impression on anyone who would ever want to mess with G.U.N. Your robots should be able send a message to them that we aren't screwing around," Atkinson continued.

"Well...of course we'd have to use _some _screws in the robots. After all, how else would they stay together?" Tails replied.

After a brief beat, Atkinson chuckled awkwardly at the apparent pun. Tails merely sat there with a confused look on his face, indicating that the pun never existed at all.

"But...isn't there some other company out there that can assemble these droids?" he continued, changing the subject. Like Wilco Automation, or...or what about Aerodyne? I know, they mainly make planes, but they've been doing some groundbreaking stuff in robotics, too, haven't they? Everything_ I _build is for either myself or Sonic to use. Y'know, small stuff. A TV, a wristwatch, electric scissors...that kind of thing," Tails asked.

"Yeah, well, no disrespect to either of those scumbag…er, compact…uh…_companies_…sorry, a little slip of the tongue there…" stuttered Atkinson. Tails jumped back in his seat a little bit from hearing Atkinson, who until this point had been flawless and flat in his tone of voice, make a Freudian slip of such magnitude. However, he just shrugged it off as a harmless, if unfortunate flub.

"…but we have something that they don't. Something truly special," the Commander continued.

"Really?" Tails asked, almost dreading the answer. "What would that be?"

"Well, it's confidential G.U.N. information. Technically, I'm not even allowed to show this to a civilian, but..."

The commander then pulled something out of the unkempt pile of papers in front of him, and slid it over to Tails. It was a small color photo taken with some sort of instant-developing camera, with the date stamp indicating that it was taken just ten days ago. The photo was grainy, but Tails could still make out the subjects of the photo: three white-coated G.U.N. scientists posing next to a glowing glass tube containing...

"Whoa!" shouted Tails. "You guys have a Chaos Emerald?" Atkinson merely nodded in response.

In a day full of major surprises for Tails, this was yet another, although this one was more positive in nature. He reacted not with a gulp of disbelief, but a tiny giggle of relief at the prospect that the one Chaos Emerald that hadn't been accounted for was in trustworthy hands.

But Commander Atkinson was not quite finished with his pitch just yet. "It's our hope that we'll somehow be able to use it to provide unmatched, self-regenerating power to our robots. We've conducted multiple experiments over the past week to try and extract power from it."

"Really?" asked Tails. "How's that been going?"

"Well, lemme put it this way. So far, every experiment we've done has ended with something exploding."

Tails let out a horrified gasp. "Oh, my goodness!" he shouted. "Was anyone hurt?"

"Well...no," answered Atkinson. "Of course, we had fire extinguishers. We were covered. The point is...well..." The Commander had trouble even uttering the following words, considering that the fox sitting across from him was one-seventh his age. But he swallowed his humiliation and let it out. "...you're the only one we know who can help us."

Tails only stared straight ahead in confusion, letting Atkinson continue.

"You see, we haven't had an opportunity to study a Chaos Emerald in decades, and the information we do have is _loooooooooong_ past obsolete. We came to you directly because you seem to know more about those things than anyone else...at least that we know of...who isn't a megalomaniacal sociopath." Atkinson explained.

Once more, Tails went into his mode of embarrassment in the face of compliments. It was his instinct at moments like these to try and find some sort of alternative explanation for an achievement, or some factoid to prove that his accomplishment wasn't quite a dramatic success as it seemed. However, in this case, a thought occurred to him. No one else _could _know as much about the Chaos Emeralds as he did. It was simply the nature of the Emeralds – powerful, rare, and always shifting between Sonic's friends and the Eggman Empire. Once they were found, the only way they could be taken by someone else was by force. No surprise, then, that Tails would take the opportunity to study them while they were in the heroes' possession. Over the past few years, no one, aside from Dr. Eggman, had made more advances and accumulated more knowledge of how the Emeralds functioned than Tails did, even though he hadn't quite used it in such an extravagant fashion as the doctor.

It was here, at this moment, that Tails finally had an epiphany of just how unique an opportunity that fate had given him. Still, he tried to downplay it, as was usually the case. "I guess I do have some experience on this subject. Really, once you catch on to how it works, it's not all _that _complicated. If you want, I'll show you guys everything!"

"Well, there you go, then. Now it's up to you to prove that you really are as capable as we think you are. Are you in, or not?"

And now he had been openly given a new challenge.

All bets were off. All of the doubts from earlier were now swept aside by a tidal wave of determination. The moment those words left Atkinson's mouth, the deal was clinched, whether he knew it or not. All that was left was for Tails, now charged with emotion, to give his word.

"You know what?!" asked Tails. "I'll take the job!"

"Fantastic!" said Atkinson. He took out his small notepad from his pile of papers and marked off another check. "Of course..I can't technically hire you until we negotiate a salary. What would you say to something in the seven digit range?"

"You kiddin' me?" said Tails, who took the Commander by surprise by suddenly leaping from his chair onto the table. "Heck, I'll work for _three _digits! My treat! Really!"

"Uh...okay?" Atkinson said, unsure if he even heard that correctly. As a matter of fact, he was so put-off by Tails' sudden exuberance that he couldn't help but back away a little bit in his chair...not that the fox even noticed. Scarcely before Atkinson had stuttered out his response, Tails opened his mouth again. "Can I start tomorrow?"

"Well...I'd like to let you, but the soonest we can let you in is Monday. We've still gotta work some...uh...administrative stuff out," answered Atkinson. He then reached back into his pile of papers and pulled out a loaded envelope, handing it to Tails. "Here are your instructions for showing up to work. This envelope contains directions to our Station Square bureau, as well as your official G.U.N. keycard. _Don't lose that_, because you'll need that to get into..."

He couldn't finish, though, as his voice had suddenly been muffled. Before he could even look up, Tails had the Commander of G.U.N. locked in a tight, friendly embrace, burying his head in Atkinson's considerably buff chest.

After a few seconds, during which Atkinson was too stunned to even say anything, Tails realized what he was doing and backed away slowly.

"Uhh..." said the blushing fox. "...sorry about that. I...guess I got a little too into it."

Atkinson was just about to reach out his left hand to shake hands with Tails' right as a formal welcome to the organization. However, a split-second later, he noticed that Tails had beaten him to it, and was shaking his hand up and down quite forcefully at that. "Anyway, it's been a real pleasure talking to you, sir. Thanks for believing in me, and you have my word that I will _not let you down!_" he said, his enthusiasm growing with every word.

And just when it seemed that his enthusiasm had reached the boiling point, he then got down from the table by leaping backwards and subconsciously making two backflips in the air, landing perfectly. Finally, before Atkinson could issue a formal goodbye and welcome to the organization, Tails walked...no, _skipped_ his way out of the meeting room, letting the heavy door slam behind him.

Atkinson, whose expensive suit was now covered in orange fox fur, was still collecting himself after what he just saw. Suddenly, in the middle of his train of thought, his wrist communicator sounded a shrill beep, causing the commander to snap away and push the button to answer the call. "Yes?" he asked the unidentified caller.

"Yeah, Killer Hawkeye to Head Honcho, requesting status update. Are we still on two strikes?" said the voice on the other end.

"Listen, call all the snipers off," said Atkinson. "We've _got _'im."

"By force or by negotiation?" asked the one code-named Killer Hawkeye.

"I talked him into it. Hell, he's working for _scale_, too! How sweet is that?!"

"Calling off all snipers, sir."

After a second of silence, the line went dead, leaving Atkinson to sit in that meeting room with nothing except his feeling of satisfaction and his hairy suit.

* * *

><p>As soon as Tails walked out of the conference room, with his twin appendages wagging like crazy behind him, he couldn't help but pump his fist in the air in celebration. He almost felt the urge to go into a quick Sonic-style breakdance, but he resisted, fearing that due to his inexperience, he would either suffer a concussion or accidentally set off the fire alarm.<p>

In the middle of his celebratory gesticulations, his mind listed off all of the benefits of his new occupation. _Let's see...I'm getting paid to do what I love, I get to help my country, and I can finance my personal projects, too...most of all, I'm gonna be able to help prevent war from breaking out! This is actually a pretty sweet break!_

The fox continued his joyful romp through the hallway, on his way back to the stairwell that led to the rooftop. However, no matter how fast or high he hopped through the halls, he still couldn't shake off some nagging anxieties that had stuck around inside his head. As his negative vibes grew and grew like an ugly tumor, he came to a stop just short of the door and sat down against the opposite wall to collect his thoughts – not the least of which was the feeling that maybe he had done something horribly wrong.

_You know...they __**are**__ asking me to do an awful lot. Can I single-handedly design a fleet of robots capable of scaring enemies into surrender? And still...they __**are**__ asking me to build weapons. What if war __**were**__ declared? Then those would be __**my**__ robots __**killing people!**__ It's not like G.U.N. has a flawless track record with scientific integrity, either. Remember what happened with Professor Gerald back in the day? And...__**gah, shut up! **__This is too much to think about!_

Despite the madness going on inside Tails' head, all that could be heard coming from his mouth was a faint sigh.

_Maybe this __**wasn't**__ such a good idea..._

But he knew he couldn't stew alone with his thoughts forever. He needed someone to talk to. As much as he wanted to avoid relying on it too often, this was one of those times when he really did need that layer of support. Finally, he got up, turned the knob and dashed up the steps to the rooftop of the Spire, where he had parked the Tornado. He knew where he would be taking the old bird for its next stop.

Well, to be more specific, he knew _who _he'd be taking it to. The matter of _where _was still a crapshoot.


End file.
